Fodor's may use your email address to send you relevant information on site updates, account changes, and offers. For more information about your privacy and protection, please review our full Privacy Policy.

Car rental at Anchorage airport

We are flying into Anchorage the first week of June. I have read a few poor reviews of certain rental companies. Does anyone have any experience with the local companies? Or advise at all in reference to renting a car. We will be needing it for 10 days. The last thing I want at the end of a beautiful vacation is a problem with the car rental. I have read horror stories of free upgrade not being free, etc, etc. Thanks for all your help! We are so excited to go. We almost have all our plans finalized. I will share all soon.

I've had every all manner of problems with car rentals, including a return line that took 90 minutes! I've had problems with all companies in all manner of cities. There's no reason to think one location is as bad (or better) than another, or that one major company would be more likely to present a problem.

The only advice I can give is to (1) go with a major company, (2) read the contract carefully -- and understand the words "or comparable model", and (3) get everything in writing. Assurances you get over the phone are WORTHLESS.

I think most of the national chains that are renting out of the ANC airport are OK, or at least similar. I've rented cars in Anchorage 8 or 9 times and the only major problem I had was with an independent company off-airport, who was closed the day I was supposed to pick up the car even though I had a 2 month old reservation. Had to scramble to find something else or I'd have been screwed.

Some general hints for ANC ... the taxes are ridiculous, I seem to remember around 33-38% total last time ... this includes state and city taxes you'll have to pay anywhere but also an "airport" tax, I forget whether it was 8 or 11% but something like that. So if you can find a place off-airport, even a mile away, you can save that 8/11% (whatever).

As an example there's a Budget place at the airport but also a Budget place at the first big intersection near hotels on Spenard, and often it was much cheaper.

So what I typically do when researching ANC cars is go to a clearing house site like, say, Priceline and first search for ANC (the airport) and note the prices, then try an off-airport search and compare prices. Sometimes the variations are major and surprising, sometimes not.

thank you for all of your replies. We did not find a xceed car rental in anchorage only in Canada? thanks Bill for the information on the tax. We will be checking into that. All the final details are very important.

I checked on the tax rates, here's apparently the latest, which is even worse than the last time I was up there -- 29.11% plus $6.50/day if renting from an airport facility:

8% Municipality of Anchorage car rental sales tax

10% State of Alaska Car Rental tax

11.11% airport concession fee recovery (when renting from airport location or if picked up at airport by rental car company)

Consolidated Facility Charge $6.50 per day (changes each year) when renting at airport or if picked up at airport by rental car company

These were copied off the Thrifty site, I assume they are accurate.

So you can avoid the 11.11% airport tax plus $6.50/day airport facility charge by renting off-airport. What we always did when renting off-site was stay at a nearby hotel on Spenard that offered free airport shuttle service, then pick up the car the next day.